Quincy explores Felix Feng's journey from bootcamp grad to professional developer, and how he went from getting $60,000 job offers to $125,000 job offers through sheer practice and persistence. Article by Felix Feng: https://twitter.com/felix2feng Read by Quincy Larson: https://twitter.com/ossia Article link: https://fcc.im/2iX0LtS Learn to code for free at: https://www.freecodecamp.org Intro music by Vangough: https://fcc.im/2APOG02 Resources mentioned: https://www.interviewcake.com https://www.hiredintech.com/classrooms/system-design/lesson/60 https://www.educative.io/collection/5642554087309312/5679846214598656 https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/1jov24/heres_how_to_prepare_for_tech_interviews/ https://github.com/h5bp/Front-end-Developer-Interview-Questions https://leetcode.com The email tool Felix uses: https://rapportive.com/   Transcript:  A less-talked about part of the bootcamper’s journey is what happens after you graduate — when you’re searching for that six-figure developer position. < 3% of applications became offers I completed Hack Reactor in July 2016 and took almost 3 months before accepting an offer with Radius Intelligence. I applied to 291 companies, did 32 phone screens, 16 technical screens, 13 coding challenges, 11 on-sites, and received 8 offers. The offers ranged from $60-125k in salary from companies all over the US, and for both front end and full stack roles. In total, 2.8% of applications became offers. Here are 5 things I wish I’d known before I began my job search. Insight #1: Get through to real people At first, I applied for companies using the shotgun approach. I applied through Indeed.com, AngelList, LinkedIn, StackOverflow, Hacker News, company websites, and even Craigslist. I’d submit a resume for any role that wanted React, Node, or JavaScript experience. In the first week, I applied to 15–20 companies a day. Pro-Tip: Find companies using this easy-application repo. My yield was low. Less than five percent of companies responded to me. I was throwing applications into a black hole. Everything changed when one of my cohort-mates, a former recruiter, shared a guide to the job search. He told us to send emails directly to real people with each application. It could be anybody. As long as someone read it. From then on, whenever I submitted an application, I searched for the company on LinkedIn and emailed someone on their engineering or hiring team. For most small companies or C-level executives, the email format is usually firstName@dreamCompany.com. For larger companies, it may be firstName.lastName@dreamCompany.com. To verify emails, I used Rapportive to cross-check emails with social media accounts. The results were amazing. With 150+ emails sent, my response rate was a whopping 22%. It also felt great to hear from real people. Surprisingly, CEOs and CTOs responded to me. Sometimes they even interviewed me themselves. Takeaway: If you’re applying through the front door, make sure you’re getting to human beings. Insight #2: Start small and work your way up You will face Level 1 interviews (a non-tech company that needs any dev), where interviewers ask you nothing more than JavaScript trivia. You will face Level 9 interviews (Google/Facebook level), where interviewers ask difficult data structure and algorithm questions. I strategically set up my process so that I had lower-level interviews earlier, and higher-level interviews later on. Early on, I gained experience, built confidence, and secured offers from companies that had less intensive interviews. As I got more experience, I effectively “leveled up.” I became capable of completing interviews at companies with higher hiring bars. This is illustrated below as a linear correlation between the number of weeks I was into the process and the base salary I was offered. There’s a direct correlation between time spent interviewing and offer salary. I unlocked tougher questions. I unlocked higher salaries. And eventually, I unlo